Most helpful positive review

I bought the other Time albums at the time of release and never bothered with this one until August 2011. That week I saw Prince at Hop Farm Festival where he did 'Cool' which was the first time I heard the song. After hearing it I was singing it all week and wondered if it was actually a new songs as I did not know it from his catologue. What a great treat to finf it on this Time album and to find the album more heavily Prince sounding than the subsequent Time albums.

Beyond Cool, which deserves it's full 10 mins plus length, other tracks such at Get it Up and After Hi School are funky but the ballads may have either not aged well or always sounded corny but can be unticked when adding this to your ipod.

Most helpful critical review

Having previously been a fan of Prince, I have been always interested in hearing the first Time album. Prince was rumoured to have played and written all the tracks here. This can be confirmed on the first listen. While Morris Day sings the lead on all tracks, you can certainly hear Prince supplying all the backing vocals. Only two songs stand out. The lengthy jams "Get it Up" and "Cool" are as good as anything Prince released under his own name at the time and his guitar solo on the former is among his best. What is interesting about the Time is the fact that their least talented member by far, Day, featured the most on their recorded material. As well as this, his camp jokey persona and silly schoolboy bragging lyrics in a way resigned the Time to being seen and remembered as the funny, but funky band that used to open for Prince. Shame really as it would have been good to see what Jam & Lewis, backed by the rest(who incidentally all became respected producers in their own right)could have come up with if Prince had let them rip it up in the studio,like they did live. Janet Jackson's breakthrough album Control is basically the Time with JJ taking the mike. Check the credits.All in all the best Time album is the next one, "What Time is it". It is frustratingly patchy as well in view of the potential talent involved but has more consistency than this one.

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Having previously been a fan of Prince, I have been always interested in hearing the first Time album. Prince was rumoured to have played and written all the tracks here. This can be confirmed on the first listen. While Morris Day sings the lead on all tracks, you can certainly hear Prince supplying all the backing vocals. Only two songs stand out. The lengthy jams "Get it Up" and "Cool" are as good as anything Prince released under his own name at the time and his guitar solo on the former is among his best. What is interesting about the Time is the fact that their least talented member by far, Day, featured the most on their recorded material. As well as this, his camp jokey persona and silly schoolboy bragging lyrics in a way resigned the Time to being seen and remembered as the funny, but funky band that used to open for Prince. Shame really as it would have been good to see what Jam & Lewis, backed by the rest(who incidentally all became respected producers in their own right)could have come up with if Prince had let them rip it up in the studio,like they did live. Janet Jackson's breakthrough album Control is basically the Time with JJ taking the mike. Check the credits.All in all the best Time album is the next one, "What Time is it". It is frustratingly patchy as well in view of the potential talent involved but has more consistency than this one.

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The Time...Released in July 1981, The Time's eponymously titled debut album is by and large a Prince product.

Although not credited himself (using the pseudonym Jamie Starr), the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, ASCAP lists Prince as the writer of five of the six songs on this album.

Sandwiched between the two in terms of release dates, without doubt 'The Time' sounds very much like Prince's 'Dirty Mind' and 'Controversy'. Four up-tempo 'Minneapolis Sound' dance-funk numbers and two ballads, make up the six tracks on this album.

The emphasis is on dance-orientated funk tunes of the time and place, which often stretch into long extended jams, that allow plenty of scope for guitar and synth solos, ultimately pointing towards some of the unedited tracks on Prince's later '1999' album.

The cheerful up-tempo funk n' roll of 'Get It Up', 'Cool', and 'The Stick' work best in this vein, whereas the two ballads, 'Girl' and 'Oh Baby' make an attempt to sound serious, but simply end up sounding a little tedious and over-long.

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I bought the other Time albums at the time of release and never bothered with this one until August 2011. That week I saw Prince at Hop Farm Festival where he did 'Cool' which was the first time I heard the song. After hearing it I was singing it all week and wondered if it was actually a new songs as I did not know it from his catologue. What a great treat to finf it on this Time album and to find the album more heavily Prince sounding than the subsequent Time albums.

Beyond Cool, which deserves it's full 10 mins plus length, other tracks such at Get it Up and After Hi School are funky but the ballads may have either not aged well or always sounded corny but can be unticked when adding this to your ipod.

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I haven't listened to the album yet so have no opinion in it's quality but I foolishly bought the Amazon mp3 before fully researching because it's only 2.99 However it's only got 5 of the 6 songs. The mp3 verison is missing the stick. I have no idea what this song is like but when I buy an album I like to get the whole thing. I can't see anywhere on the mp3 page that's it's a partial album but it does only list 5 songs whereas the CD lists all 6 so I guess I should have looked more carefully. Ho HUm.

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This album was written and recorded all by Prince (more or less), with just Morris putting his vocals on there. The Time were a fully funtional band, and played live brilliantly, but all of The Time's albums were done by Prince, not just this one.